


Farsight

by brightlights



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Sgrub Session, Caliginous Romance | Kismesis, Flushed Romance | Matesprits, Gen, Hemospectrum Flip, Pale Romance | Moirallegiance, Physical Abuse, Rebellion, Slavery
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-03-26
Updated: 2013-03-26
Packaged: 2017-12-06 13:13:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,846
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/736096
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brightlights/pseuds/brightlights
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In a world where the Signless's followers succeeded in reordering the hemospectrum, Vriska Serket, after being caught killing highbloods, is made a slave.  But she's not a troll that can be kept down easily, and she might have some unexpected allies on the way.  Will eventually feature all the trolls.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

She lay on the floor, curled up to conserve as much warmth as possible, pretending to sleep in the hopes that it would somehow protect her. Like they wouldn’t wake her up, or something. Like they would fucking hesitate to march in and hit her, kick her, break her and fill her mouth and eyes with her own blood.   
Her blue blood. It used to mean something different. Used to be something to be proud of, but that was long before her time. Long enough that she wasn’t even supposed to know it had ever been any other way.  
She shut her eyes tighter, hearing the door open. What she wouldn’t give to be able to push whoever it was out and slam the door behind them. Or better yet, to run out and keep running until she was free of all of this. She could feel their shadow over her, presence looming. So dramatic. So laughable, if she were inclined to laugh.  
The troll kicked her. She gasped out for air once; she couldn’t help it. But only once.  
“On your knees, bitch. I know you’re awake.”  
She obeyed, glaring up at him with no visible signs of the fear she felt. If she let him know that, she was lost.  
He grabbed her face and twisted it back and forth. “What the fuck is wrong with your eye?”  
She remained silent and stony, and he snapped, “Answer me!” When she didn’t, he struck her, sending her sprawling.  
“Get up,” he ordered. She did, still staring at him with an expression of disinterest.  
“What’s your name?” he asked, beginning to circle her.  
She was determined to hold out as long as she could, so she continued to say nothing, looking flatly past him. He kicked her, and she fell forward but quickly regained her balance.  
“What’s your name?” he repeated, his voice rising, grabbing a chunk of her thick hair and forcing her face up to his. She gave him a slow, insolent smile, and, enraged, he hit her again, even harder than the last time.  
Ignore the pain, she told herself firmly, it doesn’t exist. She returned to her knees and resumed her stare across the room. As if he didn’t exist. As if none of it did.  
“What,” he snarled, punctuating each word with a slap, “Is. Your. Name?”   
Her hand came up to touch her face, and when she removed it she found it dripping blue. Blood. Her blood. Her fucking blood was why all this was happening. Fury rose in her. “None of your business, fuckass,” she hissed.  
He gave her a long look and then laughed sharply, and she felt another jolt of fear run through her, which she suppressed. She was better than this.   
And suddenly he had his hand around her throat, his claws digging in at the back, and everything was going black and she couldn’t help it, she was gasping, and before she could stop herself a little whimper found its way into her voice.  
She hated herself for it.  
“You’re a slave now,” he said, his voice low, mouth brushing her ear, “and I’m here to make sure you act like one.”  
His fingers on her neck were as effective as a gag on her mouth, and no matter how much she sputtered she couldn’t get a word out. He smiled, the sick fuck, obviously noticing her struggle, and said, “I won’t let you go until you beg me.”  
At that, she forced out the most distinguishable “Ha!” she could manage, and his fingers tightened around her neck. The world began to go black around her, but--no, no, he won’t kill me--She looked up into his eyes and saw something there that terrified her, though she would never admit it, and she locked onto his gaze but everything was so dark, she could hardly see his face now, and his grip just kept getting tighter and he was really going to do it, he would really kill her over this.  
“Pl--” she choked, and consciousness seemed so slippery, so fragile. “Plllllls--”  
He lightened his grip, just a little, enough for her vision to clear a little but nowhere close to freedom. “What was that?” He was laughing, laughing...  
“Please,” she whispered hoarsely, so weak, so pathetic. But it would keep her alive, and that was what mattered. Alive, she could get revenge. “Please...”  
He squeezed tighter and then released her, and she fell, gasping as much air as she could take in, dizzy and in shock but too focused on drinking in as much sweet, sweet oxygen as she could to care much.   
“You’ll learn,” he told her, and she would happily have smashed his face in right then. “You’re going to learn, slave.”  
She wanted nothing more than to spit at him, but her throat throbbed so badly and she just couldn’t face him choking her again, not now. Apparently it showed on her face, because he gave her a satisfied look and, with one last kick, he left here there.  
For a long time, she lay gasping on the ground, until slowly, slowly, she dragged herself up, first to sitting, then to standing. A gesture of defiance that no one would see.  
That was all right. Because one day, she would make them pay.

It took a while for him to get her name out of her. Partly, she was just being stubborn, but as soon as he knew it he would start to take it away from her, it and her identity with it, and she was more afraid of that than anything else he could do to her.  
But she knew there was a place from which she could not return, and she needed her mind whole. So as she lay there, panting and bloody and shaking from hunger, and she heard him raise his whip again behind her, she whispered, “Vriska.”  
“What?”   
“My name.” Her throat was so raw she could barely speak. “Vriska. Vriska Serket.”  
He lowered the whip--she sighed in relief--and forced her head up. “Really.”  
She nodded, as well as she could around his grip, and he released her, smiling that awful smile. “That wasn’t so hard, was it?”  
And she couldn’t help it. “You’ve got to be fucking joking,” she rasped out.   
Which got her a slap across the face and it all began again except now she was a little closer to losing herself. 

He never called her by her name, and he never gave her his. He called her “slave” or “girl” or “you” or, when he was particularly angry at her, “bitch”; she was expected to call him “sir.” For a long time, she refused, but slowly she gave in on that point, and then the next, and then the next. She never made it easy for him, but it happened regardless, because he had all the power and she had none. One day, wiping a streak of her blood off his hand, he told her that she fought him harder than anyone else ever had. “When I finally break you,” he had murmured in her ear, twisting a strand of her hair around his finger, “it’s gonna be the best day of my life.”  
“Your black infatuation with me is disgusting,” she had spat, and it went on.  
It had been seasons since she’d last slept in a recuperacoon, and the dreams were getting to her, and she was always so hungry and in pain, and even when he finally let her out of the cell it was only to complete the chores he assigned her, and after a while she couldn’t do it anymore.  
None of it mattered, she would tell herself every day as she was falling into uneasy sleep and every night when she woke up. She was Vriska Serket, and they could make her act like a slave but they couldn’t make her truly become one, and they would regret everything they’d done to her.


	2. Chapter 2

It was the Signless who changed everything, though he hadn’t lived long enough to see it.  
His followers had been furious at his death, furious enough to decide they had nothing to lose. Soon, the irons were everywhere: drawn on walls, sewn in clothing, tattooed or cut into skin. They were disorganized at first, picked off easily, but they kept coming. For sweeps, they kept coming.  
When the Summoner was born, it was into a world of unrest, of chaos and confusion. He channeled it into revolution.  
It wasn’t so hard, when it came down to it. They had numbers and psionics on their side, and more importantly, they had vicious drive. Whatever they had to pay, they would, and did.  
Once the Condesce was killed, crashed on some dead unknown planet by her own Helmsman, it was over. The seadwellers retreated, disappearing into the ocean, and those who used to be nobility were turned to slaves or servants. The new world order was not equality; it was retribution.  
Soon enough, it was just the way things were. After the trials, all indigo- and purplebloods were sent to be trained as slaves. Cerulean- and tealbloods were allowed lusii but could rarely find positions as anything but servants, and were often sold into slavery as a result of debt or crimes or simple cruelty.

For Vriska, it was crime.  
From the moment the spider chose her, she knew that she was going to have to kill to survive. It was troll nature, she told herself, and she had a duty to protect her lusus.   
It was illegal to kill anyone with higher blood than hers. She did what she had to, for as long as she could. She held out a long time, but in the end they caught her and killed her lusus. It had to happen sometime, she supposed, and maybe it would have been a relief--it was so wrong of her to think it but running and killing and killing and killing and running had just made her so tired--except for what this meant.   
She’d told them she’d be gone within a perigee, because saying it had made her feel like she had a hold on herself, like she had some small amount of control, and they’d laughed and told her that would be beaten out of her within the week. She had promised herself that, no matter what, she would at least make as much trouble as she possibly could, that if this was the life she was doomed to she would make damn well sure it was at least a fraction as difficult for them as it was for her.  
They’d thrown her in a cell and given her over to the slave trainer, and in her head she just kept chanting to herself that she would never give in.

Vriska was scrubbing the kitchen floor when he came in. Immediately, she assumed the posture she’d been taught, kneeling, almost on all fours, her eyes trained on the ground, rag forgotten halfway to the soapy water. For a while he had made her use a bucket for the cleaning supplies, just one more game he played with her, another way to humiliate her. Recently, though, he’d been giving her a more standard trough-like container, which she had to admit was infinitely preferable.  
“You, slave,” he snapped.  
“Yes, sir?” she said quietly, not entirely sure whether he was actually talking to her. His refusal to call any of them by their names was confusing at best.  
“Come with me.” He gestured for her to stand, which she did, and grabbed her shoulder, steering her forward. She remained docile in his grip, knowing better than to struggle.  
“You’ve been very well-behaved lately.” He stopped her, spinning her around to face him, and touched the bruise on her cheekbone. “Well, mostly,” he amended, and continued to walk. She followed, two steps behind him as she’d been taught, biting the inside of her cheek. She’d found it was the only effective way to keep herself quiet; in the time it took to dislodge her teeth she usually reconsidered whatever she was going to say.  
She rarely talked at all, now. Most of her comments got her punished, based on either their content or their timing, and although it was satisfying to see him angry, it was less and less worth it. “Yes, sir” and “no, sir” were the only safe phrases. Last time she’d asked him a question, he’d given her the bruise she had now for speaking without permission.  
He stopped again, and she let out a tiny sigh of irritation, barely more than a breath, as he pulled her forward, his hand grasping her hair. “You’d better keep it that way,” he hissed, low and menacing.  
“Yes, sir,” she said, her face as blank as she could make it.  
“Because if you don’t--if you embarrass me--I will make sure that the last half-sweep put together looks like a pleasant aftermidnight in comparison.”  
“Yes, sir,” she repeated, and he let her go. Embarrass him? That was new. That meant...  
Vriska froze.   
That meant she was being presented to someone. Which in turn meant a potential buyer.  
There was no other reason that she could think of that she would be in a position to embarrass him. She hurried to catch up with him, biting her cheek harder now.   
She might get to leave this place. That was her first thought, and it flooded her with exhilaration, with hope. Except that, as far as she knew, it might actually be better here, which was utterly horrifying.   
He turned a corner and walked down a long hallway, and she followed, trembling just a little as he swung open a door.  
She fell to her knees, trying to take in as much of the troll as she could without looking at him directly. From what she could tell, he was on the short side, though he was taller than she was, and rather thin. He stood like someone used to getting what he wanted.   
“Here she is, my lord,” the trainer said, and Vriska had to fight to hide a smile, hearing him talk that way. For all his talk, his smug superiority, he was still a midblood--olive, by his eyes--and he had to bow and scrape before highbloods just as much as she did.  
Well, she thought, her eyes narrowing imperceptibly at the ground as he took her chin in his hand, not quite. He stared at her, and she took care to keep her eyes down.  
“The eye with the mutation is more powerful?” the highblood (she hadn’t seen a sign or his irises, but judging from the manner of address the trainer used she suspected he was at least a bronzeblood) asked dubiously.  
“Yes, sir,” he said.   
The highblood continued his examination of her face. “What’s this?” He pointed to her bruise.  
The trainer threw her a look that promised more than a bruise if that kept him from buying her. “She spoke out of turn,” he admitted. “Didn’t take much to straighten her out, though.”  
He let go of her, frowning. “Is that common?”   
Vriska was looking vacantly across the room, pretending she couldn’t hear them talking about her this way. She tried to ignore what they were saying, make it fade into white noise, but she couldn’t filter out the conversation entirely.  
“...properly obedient but not weak...”  
She began chewing on her cheek again.  
It seemed like hours (and maybe it was; she’d had little sense of time since she’d been captured) before he finally said, “I’ll take her.”  
He moved out his arm, and she finally saw the symbol sewn into his sleeve: a white circle. It took conscious effort for her to stop her surprise from showing on her face.  
White. The highblood was a sponsor. In his own way, equal to the Empress herself. That might have shocked her more once, maybe even scared her a little. She felt oddly indifferent. He was worlds above her on the spectrum, but she was a slave, and therefore below everyone. The degree of difference, after a certain point, didn’t matter much.   
“Excellent, my lord,” the trainer said breathlessly. “The papers will arrive within the next two nights. And my lord--may I say you’ve made an excellent choice.”  
“You’d hardly tell me otherwise,” the sponsor said dryly. “Come on, girl,” he snapped at Vriska.  
It took her a moment to process what had happened. That she had been bought by another troll so simply, so quickly... She had to take a long breath to calm herself. Thinking like that with the sponsor--her new master, she thought bitterly--and the trainer staring at her would get her nowhere.  
“Don’t fuck up,” he hissed in her ear. His parting words. She wanted more than anything to give him a snappy retort, and it made her all the more helplessly angry that she couldn’t.  
She knew better now.  
So instead, she said, “Yes, sir,” and hurried to catch up with her new master, walking two steps behind him.


	3. Chapter 3

He had sent Vriska to his hive in a separate carriage with the supplies he’d bought, and she was uncomfortably aware that she was an acquisition. That many of the things around her were probably worth more than she was. At first she thought it was a calculated move to put her in her place.   
Then she realized that he probably hadn’t thought about it all, and that was worse.  
His hive was beautiful, everything she’d expected except far more luxurious than she could have imagined, but she didn’t have time to look for long. He had summoned her to his private study as soon as she arrived, and she wasn’t keeping him waiting. Wasn’t going to give him an excuse to punish her the first day she was there.   
His reaction when she came in and knelt in front of his desk was unexpected. He laughed. And laughed, and laughed, and laughed. Vriska kept her eyes down. She didn’t ask, she didn’t join in, she didn’t even look up.  
He gave her a sharp-toothed grin. “What is your name?”  
The trainer’s voice echoed in her head. “I have no name. I am a slave to be used at your will.”  
He walked over and pressed his finger to the bruise. She stood still under his examination. “To whom do you belong?”  
“To you, Master.”  
“So they did manage to train you.” He laughed again, and she tensed just a little under his finger. “You’re worth ten times what I paid for you.”  
Vriska blinked. What was that supposed to mean?  
“I know who you are, girl,” he said, obviously noticing her confusion. “Most trolls your blood color would be culled for what you did.”  
This time, she stiffened completely. He knew. She was struck by sudden terror that this was revenge, that he had known one of the trolls she’d fed to her lusus, or that he wanted to make an example of her, or...  
“Calm down,” he said, sounding amused. “I was impressed. It took you a while to get caught. Of course you did eventually, but your persistence was admirable.” He put a finger under her chin and gently lifted it. “I saved you because of it.”  
Vriska tried to process what he was saying, but all she could think was, It’s his fault I’m a slave.  
And deeper than that, a voice she tried to silence but couldn’t, the unrelenting self-preservationist in her, said, But you’re alive, and you owe him.  
“You belong to me in more ways than one,” he said, letting her go and beginning to pace around her. “I expect you to remember that.  
“You’ve probably noticed I’m a sponsor. The protection of my candidate is, of course, paramount, but in her case, the need is twofold. She is the descendant of the current Empress. Keeping her safe requires constant vigilance from the hivehold. That now includes you.”  
She nodded to show she understood, though she was more surprised than she wanted to admit to herself. Indirectly, she was now the slave of the Empress’s descendant, and she hated herself for being honored.  
“I chose you for two reasons: one, your enhanced vision, and two, your propensity for manipulation. You will have reduced chores, but you will spend that time working to ensure that she is kept alive and unhurt. You and I are the only ones who know this. Keep it that way.” She felt his eyes on her. He was probably looking for a reaction, but, truth be told, she wasn’t sure how to feel. She was...what was she? A bodyguard? A spy?  
“I want to make it very clear that, despite your expanded duties, you are officially my personal slave and you will behave as such. I chose you, but I can easily replace if necessary. I would advise you to make sure I don’t need to. You will address the Empress’s descendant as ‘Mistress’ and you will follow her commands, as well as those of any other free troll, unless they directly conflict with orders I have given you.” He paused. “Do you have any questions?”  
Vriska didn’t know where to start. “No, Master,” she said. It was the safest answer.   
He nodded. “Good,” he said shortly. “Then there’s one more thing we have to attend to.”   
She watched him warily as he crossed to the fireplace, and it took her longer than it should have to figure out what he was doing.  
Shit, she thought wildly, a shadow of her former self. He picked something up and began heating it. Irons in the fire. She’d made herself forget about the owner’s brand. Now...well, now she remembered. She felt sick with fear. It wasn’t as though she hadn’t felt pain before, but this was different. This would be on her skin until the day she died. Even if she managed to get free, she would always be marked as someone else’s property.  
He came toward her, and her eyes widened, her body shaking. “Give me your right arm.”  
She did it, because when she got down to it she was more afraid of disobeying than the brand.   
It was how she’d been conditioned to be.  
He grabbed her wrist and pressed the iron into her forearm, and she tried to stay silent but it burned, it was like no other pain she’d ever felt, and she would never be entirely free of him, and it hurt so badly. She couldn’t do it. She let out a strangled sound, part gasp, part sob, part scream, and it didn’t even seem to register on his face. It hurt, it hurt, it hurt, and it would be there forever but it was not hers she was ScorpioScorpioScorpioScorpio she was Vriska SerketSerketSerketSerket...  
And, calmly, he pulled it away. She saw him do it but she could still feel it on her skin, burning away her flesh, and she was panting and she was afraid to look at it but she had to. She had to know.  
It wasn’t so bad, really, she thought. It felt like it should be much worse. It was blue and raised and bubbled slightly, but it wasn’t on fire, wasn’t consuming her whole arm. Just the outline of a circle.  
He put the iron back and turned back to her. So calm. As if he hadn’t just burned his sign into her skin. “You are dismissed for today. An indigo named the Mechanic is in charge of the slaves. He will explain your living situation and schedule. I expect you to report to my study tomorrow. I will give you your duties then.”  
“Yes, Master,” Vriska said, her voice shaking. She stood up, bowing, and left the room, still facing him. As she’d been taught.

As soon as she was down the hallway, she let herself lean against a wall, just for a moment, and stared at her arm. It was throbbing terribly and she felt like she couldn’t breathe properly, but the pain was duller than before, which was a relief. Gritting her teeth, she pushed off the wall, supporting herself with it before she stood fully.  
She heard a cough behind her and turned slowly. The troll was tall and astonishingly muscular. He wore the same deep green the walls were painted in. A decorative choice, she assumed. She’d never seen a troll with that blood color and anyway sponsors renounced their own blood castes when they chose their candidates. She looked up as much as she dared, checking for the troll’s sign, but where it should have been was the white circle.  
Another slave, then. “You must be the new girl,” he said, his speech surprisingly precise. She nodded.  
He gave her a smile, which made her wary. Smiles from the trainer had never meant anything good. Vriska was pretty sure she was the lowest of the low at this point, being new. And considering the pain in her arm and his enormous size, he could more or less do whatever he wanted with her. “I’m the Mechanic.”  
“I...don’t have a name,” she said.  
“No, of course not.” His voice was so gentle. Too gentle, she thought. He looked her over, his eyes settling on her branded arm. “May I see?”  
It wasn’t as though she had a choice. She stuck it out, and he took her wrist, his touch lighter than she would have thought. “Good. Very clean. I’ll give you something to put on it so it doesn’t get infected.” His eyes flicked to her face. “May I call you Cerulean until the master gives you a name? Standard protocol, you understand.”  
“Sure,” she said. Reduced to her blood color again--that was hardly new. It wasn’t as though she had any dignity left anyway.  
He took her down a series of hallways, which gradually grew dingier and dirtier and more like what she was used to. What was expected for a slave. Opening a door, he said, “These are the slaves’ quarters.”  
Vriska looked around. Small cots occupied almost every open space she could see; there was barely enough room to walk around. There were no recuperacoons, not that she had really expected any. Slaves weren’t generally allowed them, though she’d heard that they mixed small doses of sopor into the food of purples and particularly violent indigos or sometimes ceruleans. It wouldn’t surprise her. They were chattel, toothless and impotent. “Are all of these being used?”  
The Mechanic laughed. “Certainly not. This row,” he indicated the line of beds closest to her, “is all empty. Take whichever one you’d prefer.” He glanced at the clock on the wall. “The rest should be back soon, and we’re expected to be asleep not long after that, so I’ll be brief.  
“There’s an alarm for us in the mornings. It’s early, but make sure you wake up to it. We report for our duties fifteen minutes after it goes off. It’s absolute chaos so some of us get up earlier. The master might have you take your meals with him, but otherwise we eat in the room across the hall.” He pointed, and she turned to look. “Most of us are dismissed around this time. The lights are set to go off fifteen minutes after the alarm does--I’m sure you’re sensing a pattern here--and I’d recommend that you stay in bed at night. There are guards stationed who won’t hesitate to punish anyone who gets out of line.”  
Of course there were.  
He rummaged under one of the beds--she assumed it was his--and pulled out a safe, which he unlocked with a key around his wrist. “These are the medical supplies. If you’re approved for medical attention, I’ll take care of it.” He pulled something out and returned to her. “There’s a blanket order to apply this to the brands of all new slaves. If you would hold out your arm again...?”  
She did, and he rubbed some sort of salve into it. Her whole body sagged in relief. It had a cooling effect, and when she looked at the brand again she was surprised to see that the swelling was already beginning to recede.  
“Do you have any questions?” he asked, putting the cap back on and locking the safe again.  
Maybe she did, but she was too overwhelmed even to think of what they might be. “No,” she said. “I think I just want to go to sleep.”  
“Of course.” He nodded, giving her another smile. “If you need anything, just come to me.”  
“Sure,” she said quietly, wondering if she even knew how to ask for help anymore. If she ever had. He seemed to read something of that in her face, because he looked a little sad for a moment.   
She slid into one of the beds and hoped that her dreams would be bearable today.


End file.
